


Analepsis

by Terror_AI



Category: Metal Gear
Genre: Implied/referenced Post- Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Killing of Liquid Snake, M/M, Nightmares, Pre-Relationship, Purple Prose
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-23
Updated: 2020-09-23
Packaged: 2021-03-07 16:48:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,915
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26610925
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Terror_AI/pseuds/Terror_AI
Summary: Before Snake is a burning segment between two rays, either end scorching with the fires of hell across an open stretch of undeterminable distance.The truth is, a man like him has no fate beyond an early grave and a few good, long years of dissociative killing.
Relationships: Otacon/Solid Snake
Comments: 4
Kudos: 12
Collections: How Do Your Genes Sleep?





	Analepsis

Snake awakens often in the night, those memories acerbic and stinging in the cellular structure of his lungs. He finds himself a foot from steady ground, thrashing among drenched sheets like a fish on damp soil, gasping for something palpable; a modicum of oxygen. He’s fevered, waning back to days passed, adrift between being the colonel’s bright and shiny toy-soldier and his father’s quiet little shadow, identical and eager to please. 

His brother’s hollow ribs fluttered like wings, expanding their fractured pieces against the pale tautness of his lesioned skin, desperate to get the final word in, expel that arrogance because faux pride was all he had left at the end. He hadn’t eaten since their rebellion had begun. He made the psychic gimp at his side seem so sane by comparison, with his flexed muscles an unsightly pallor, athletic but waning in strength. He betrayed his own weakness seemingly in spite of how strong he’d wished he was. Snake could see the desperation in his eyes, right beside that silent pleading that Snake himself had come to know, begging the cosmos for some semblance of purpose to blossom at the end in a bright and spectacular burst of light - to feel a sense of belonging amid the alienation - but there was no mercy for little brother when the snow fell and covered his oozing wounds in lustrous bandages from beyond the fray. There was no glory or purpose in his death.

Snake tread down the ice-capped mountain beneath an overcast sky amid a flood of despairing, steel grey, tripping on empty shell casings and debris; what he left behind was an empty husk more useful in its vacancy than drawing breath. Snake wondered back then if he, too, were destined for such a fate. If their likeness boiled down to more than a discernable and imperfect phenotype, or the cold-heartedness which they all seem to know and harbor. If his death would be by the hands of a comrade following orders, untimely and yet far overdue. 

To be undone by one’s own genetics is a difficult feat to achieve. Liquid’s being was tainted with the fear of inadequacy and his endeavors from birth onward were dedicated to proving his own pride as being just. He failed, and yet he made a _lifetime_ of it. Snake has made his years a collage of disquiet briefing rooms and seconds split between the ringing of his ears and the cries of his bested enemies. He saw his own shortcomings reflected back at him in his brother’s dead eyes, and he felt envy, because at the very least, Liquid _always knew what he wanted from life._

Before Snake is a burning segment between two rays, either end scorching with the fires of hell across an open stretch of undeterminable distance; his brother’s voice goading and beckoning him backward, their father’s unimpassioned expression asking him instead, _when will you be good enough?_ Yet there is no direction as simple as true north, only mindless droning onward through each mission, as opposed to naive deviation - pining for domesticity, home-cooked meals. The truth is, a man like him has no fate beyond an early grave and a few good, long years of dissociative killing. He will make a game of watching how long Otacon can go before collapsing from exhaustion and see how he himself fares under self-imposed duress, and care not for the creature comforts or slow moments in between.

Snake erases his own humanity with every passing terror that plagues him in the night. He finds his sense of self buried between memories he cannot tread past, and emotions he’s not yet discerned the origin of. Amid the confusion is fear. Fear that he may uncover something in his digging for sanity which he will not like, so he does not dig, only buries. His shovel is a glass bottle evoking a cluster of grapes upturned, and the mound of earth he pulls from is an amber, smoky pungence. 

Otacon finds him nursing his fears and the vulnerable humanity embedded within them with a bottle until they tremble and fractalize as he does; seething into his own knees, cheeks dry and cracked from old tears; his eyes burning anew, seeing with a fragile perspective, unsure of himself and drifting in the dark. 

He doesn’t ask questions, often. Snake sees that look of confusion flash across his face, and then a shallow pity in its wake, and he _loathes_ it. 

There’s nothing but whiskey to drink from that night, consumed as a sacrament before the consummation of horror, nevertheless with Snake disarmed by his own deteriorating condition. If Otacon leaves, the problem will sort itself out. But there’s no will between them left to put up with the facade any longer. 

Beside him, Otacon kneels. There's cowardice in the way both of them shy away from the gesture

Otacon toys with the drawstrings of his hoodie, fingers trembling so violently, even Snake can see it in the dark. He’s _afraid_ of Snake. 

“I don’t think you should keep yourself up like this.”

Snake feels his anger choking him. Rope burn. Twist and dangle. It’s a ghost around his throat provoking his emotions beyond what spirits could serve to alleviate. “You’re one to talk,” he retorts, yet there’s exhaustion coiling above his head in a heinous halo, resting at his temples, asking him _why bother?_ “Sorry if I woke you,” he finally supplies.

“Oh, you didn’t.” 

Snake struggles, feeling himself swinging from the rafters as the conversation flounders before ever managing to find its bearings. Feels the rope tighten, the ghosts in his throat, gnawing at his soul. He takes a swig and holds it until it burns. Scorching, _up, up, up_ the flames go.

“Snake,” Otacon begins, reluctantly eyeing him up and down with that look Snake hates to see. “Have you ever asked yourself why you helped me back at Shadow Moses?”

The grave of his estranged brother was a place of many things, and true, that is where Snake and Otacon met, but it was never a memorial to anything worth reflecting upon. No taste in its memory besides the beast of remorse breathing black plumes and whispering assured destruction, as it always has. 

“No, I haven’t.” The colonel’s orders were intelligence gathering, with no farce for the enemy to swallow - infiltration and asset procurement, nothing more. Snake never found himself seeking deeper meaning beyond the briefing he was given. “There’s no point in pondering what could’ve been, or what almost wasn’t." Perhaps he would sound philosophical to a third party, however now, his nihilism is the sum of what shines through.

Otacon nods as if he understands the breadth of Snake’s true implications with that. He thinks for a moment, glancing around. “You’re having a conflict of character versus nature, I think. I think you want to feel good about what you’re doing, but there’s no feasible proof that your actions are anything but mistaken,” he suggests. “I can’t help you feel better about your own intentions, but... you saved me from Liquid, and that… meant _something_.” Snake finds his attention spreading thin as he speaks; as though sleeping on a concussion, the world is quiet, yet swimming, falling away. He isn’t sure if he prefers the lapping of disembodied waves, or Otacon’s adenoidal voice unintentionally twisting the knife in its wound. “You aren’t the sum of your genetic coding, Snake. not any more than i'm just-- a miserable echo of my father’s legacy of botched deterrence theory. We’re individuals and we’re taking this road together. You picked me up when I was at my worst. Maybe that one instance of mercy justifies--“ he gestures vaguely to nothing in particular, “ _whatever_ bad things you’ve done in your life.” 

Snake doesn’t miss a beat, even inebriated. “Maybe I’m using you and don’t even know it,” he ponders, swaying his bottle and watching the particles disperse within its amber depths. He shrugs one shoulder at the thought, not plagued by its reality as he should be, his emotions weeding themselves out, leaving only bitter anger to die a gluttonous death, fully sated and expressed far beyond necessity. “You could be a pitstop on the way to someone else’s victory. A passing wind carrying another’s success on your feeble back. And you would never know it. You don’t have a grasp of your own worth, what difference would it make?” He takes a swig, his train of thought trailing into muddled inconsistencies. “Don’t worry about what I am or am not, alright?”

Otacon is quiet, for a time. His pupils are blown wide in a pitch flare, drowning out the trademark glaze of his cerulean irises when someone reminds him of his own mortality, the uselessness of pondering a value or fortune when his time is so limited. Snake can’t help but linger on his face when he looks down to his lap - not defeated, but accepting, acknowledging - and it pokes that beast of remorse inside of Snake that reminds him of his manners, of his conscience which war and whiskey have yet to fully wrench from him. 

“I would be okay with that, though, you know?“ His voice is small, resigned. "I don’t care about silly legacies, or leaving behind kids, or living a long life. I’m afraid of dying,” he admits, and the uncomfortable lump in his throat bounces. “And I know that makes me lesser in your eyes, but I’m not afraid of helping others. If using me as a stepping stone would bring you peace in the end, then I wouldn’t complain. Really.” 

“ _Otacon_ ,” Snake tries, his words falling short. 

Snake has seen a great deal of disarmament tactics in his life, and yet none compare to the feeble smile that Otacon gives him with such contentment; it's not a deceptive farce, but a genuine resignation and acceptance of his own worth, which he perceives to be next to nothing. “We’re a team now, you know? I want to help you go all the places I know I can't. The world is better for your strength, Snake. Don’t diminish it.” 

Moments like this one change the face that Snake sees when he looks in the mirror. Casting aside every wrongdoing he's committed in the past, at this moment, looking into Otacon’s eyes is grueling. Snake is no hero, but he can’t decide if he is a saint or the devil’s son. He has no grasp of what side he falls on, only the pain swimming in everyone’s eyes when they look at him, knowing he is beyond tangible to their pliant, _civilian_ souls. 

He stares into his bottle of comfort and sees it turn to a chemical ooze before his eyes, almost leans into Otacon and whispers, _do you see it too?_ Otacon would not, however. He would see a sad young man’s soul withering away into something jaded, senile, not knowing he’s only another five or so years from being stripped down to nothing just the same, finally undone. Otacon doesn’t know that the unhinged beast before him is as good as he’ll ever get.

Snake drags himself on the edge of a piece of furniture before finding himself upright. He fists his bottle, taking down the rest of it in one go, fluid streams flowing down his chin, staining his collar. Otacon has disappeared.

Snake mumbles to no one in particular, saying, “you’re a _fool._ ” He collapses onto a bed that was never his.


End file.
